Financial District

Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.Inflation dominated news headlines and American psyches in 2022. Overall, consumer prices jumped an average 7.1 percent this year, with the cost of just about everything going up, from cars to coffee and gas to groceries. The trend triggered a bitter midterm election campaign, prompted a series of aggressive interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, and fears about an impending recession.The…

PG&E workers repair power lines in the Coffey Park neighborhood following the damage caused by the Tubbs Fire on October 13, 2017 in Santa Rosa, California.Photo: Elijah Nouvelage (Getty Images)This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s private utility company that maintains a monopoly over electric service in the state, let go of thousands of contractors and employees across multiple trades over the last month.Union leaders…

The consequences for Pacific Gas & Electric’s negligent involvement in the ignition of multiple deadly wildfires across California continue to mount. A group of 20 former executives at the utility company reached a $117 million settlement regarding the 2017 North Bay fires and 2018 Camp fire Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported.The execs were initially sued by a the PG&E Fire Victim Trust, a group created to represent fire victims and their families following the utility’s 2019 post-bankruptcy reorganization…